My husband will be getting a paycheck and they will not be taking taxes out. How do go about reporting our taxes? I've been told to report it quarterly, but we're not sure. Do we pay an estimated tax? Please advise.

Um, is your husband going to be an employee, or is he a consultant in business for himself, doing temporary work? If it is the former, then he should find a new job right away. The employer will be headed for jail shortly. If it is the latter, there are a bunch of things that can be done. For example, if you have a job yourself, you could increase your own withholding (I am assuming you are Married Filing Jointly). Naturally, there is more to it than that.

I think we need to know more before much that is useful to you can be said.

At the moment, he is a temporary employee working through a temp agency. He's doing business for a corporation that will be hiring him shortly as a permanent employee and when that happens they will be taking the taxes out. So, we're saving it up until they hire him permanently. I have not changed my withholding yet. We got married four months ago. I guess I need to change that. I wasn't quite sure how soon to change etc.

Also as long as your income is less than $150k/year (AFAIR) you will not have any tax penalty (if you owe a lot at tax time) as long as your total withholdings for this tax year is equal to or greater than your tax liability last year.

If the period of time your husband is a temp is small, then it probably won't matter. If it has been a while then you may want to consider uping you and/or your husband's witholding for the rest of the year.

Run the numbers on last years tax tables from the IRS (this will be inaccurate, but it will be in your favor) to see if the liability is large, and to figure out the appropriate amount to have withheld.

Just be sure one way or another, you withhold total in 1999 slightly more than your 1998 combined taxes. That way you'll incur no penalty for underpayment. Your husband will have to file a schedule C for his 1099 income and pay Self Employed Social Security ( or at least Medicare) and take the 1/2 deduction on 1040 line 27. Ed

The two things on our side was that we weren't earning a whole lot at that time (come to think of it, we're not earning a whole lot now!) which capped the damage,and our witholdings for the previous year were on target, so we weren't subsequently required to file estimated taxes.

However, we did have to cough up a rather larger-than-anticipated check at short notice.(And here we thought we'd pay less by being wed.)

Do you mean taxes you would have had to paid if filing jointly? or tax returns you would have received."

They would have had to pay more. That's the whole thing behind the "marriage tax", because while I think it still benifits families with only 1 person working, it goes against families where both work. The idea is to make it fair for all, but all is quite a big group of people.

Luckily I don't have to worry about this for a while (famous last words :)